The present invention relates to telecommunications systems and, in particular, to an improved system and method for determining the availability of network resources.
Telecommunications devices or clients in networks, such as Internet Protocol (IP) networks, share a variety of network resources. These include, for example, conferencing or MCU channels, gateway channels, media-on-hold ports, IVR ports, unified messaging ports, recorded announcements, media recording ports, DTMF detection ports, call parking slots, pilot numbers to applications, and the like.
As can be appreciated, high demand resources are occasionally not available when needed by a network device. In such cases, the client typically has one of two options. First, the client could randomly attempt to re-connect to the busy resource, and hope that it will soon become available. However, this method may be disadvantageous in that another client may access the resource first when it does become free.
Alternatively, the client may employ a “presence” feature, whereby the client subscribes to a particular network resource to be notified when the resource becomes available. However, when the resource becomes free, all parties waiting for that resource are notified simultaneously. Thus, it is possible even with a presence subscription for another client to gain access to the resource first. In addition, by subscribing to a particular network resource, the user is not able to take advantage of the resource becoming free at another instance of the resource. For example, if a client monitors for a free channel specifically at a Gateway A, then the client would not be aware that an equally good channel on Gateway B has become available, unless the client also subscribes to the Gateway B for presence.
These and other drawbacks in the prior art are overcome in large part by a system and method for accessing busy IP network resources according to embodiments of the present invention.